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If you watch the news, you might think that the world is more divided than ever before. We see news articles and opinion pieces calling Trump a fascist or suggesting that the entire GOP is somehow corrupted by corruption, evil, and fascism. The left, meanwhile, is portrayed as full of radical socialists and baby-killers.

But a recent study has revealed that even diverse groups around the world have more in common than we think.  Another study revealed that only 33% of Americans are at the polar opposites of the political spectrum, the other 67% represent the exhausted majority. What accounts for the difference between perception and reality?

Many people assume that groups of people are inherently different from other groups, thanks to our tendency towards tribalism. That makes sense––humans do like to group together for safety. It’s something we’ve done since caveman days. But that doesn’t account for the fact that we aren’t actually as different as we assume, or at least not entirely. Tribalism may be one of the root causes, but maybe other things exacerbate our tribalistic tendencies.

One of the things that make our tribalistic tendencies worse is the media. News organizations––especially cable news––exist not to keep us informed, but to make money. They capitalism on tribalism by catering to in-groups and touting fear of out-groups. That’s why nearly 70% of Americans report “news fatigue.” It’s exhausting to be afraid and hateful all the time. But the opposite––feeling good and connected to other people––isn’t as popular.

Another problem is social media. Social media users naturally find their tribe, and that creates a social media echo chamber. It’s hard to tell if you’re in an echo chamber because we naturally fall into them––who wants to read people who disagree with us? Out-group bashing occurs frequently on social media, since hatred of an enemy is a powerful force that unites people.

But there’s something else that causes us to tribe up and to assume that we’re different from others. It’s something that exists deep within our brains, and it’s hard to notice. Once you start noticing it, however, you can’t stop. Essentially, we inhabit a chaotic world. We’re surrounding by things that are dangerous, and things that we don’t understand. To keep ourselves from going mad, we try to organize and categorize the world around us. The world then becomes split into two things: chaos and order.

All sorts of things fall into the chaos category, but the most significant for us in modern times is other people. If you don’t know how this can be the case, just watch the first few seasons of The Walking Dead. That perfectly dramatizes the fear we feel of people we don’t know. The first season of Lost is another good example.

The point is this: we naturally need to categorize people into “us” and “them,” chaos and order. The media does this for us, but we don’t need much help. What we forget as we do this is that other people are just that––people. As a result, there’s more that unites people than divides them. When we get stuck in echo chambers, or watch too much Fox News or CNN, we forget that.

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